Mosaic designs, that are formed of pieces of tile, glass, plastic, stone chips etc., are generally made by manually creating individual designs, by hand placing various pieces of tile etc., to achieve the desired artistic effect. Pieces of glass, or plastic, can be leaded together by securing the edges of the pieces together to form the design, such as disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,302,206 issued to J. Meltzer. If pieces of stone are used, the design can be made by encapsulating the entire unit by a molding process with the use of an epoxy type glue. Tile type designs are usually created by either cementing individual tile pieces directly on to the surface to which they are to be permanently adhered, or alternately, by securing the backs of tile pieces to a netting or screening type material as a carrier and then cementing the combination of the carrier and the tile unit permanently in place. A tile design is disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 400,467 issued to H. B. Allaeys, in which the individual tile pieces are cemented together as a unit with the cement placed between the various tile pieces as well as covering the backs of the tile pieces. For those units that are individually created by hand placing individual pieces to form the desired designs, such as in the above mentioned Allaeys reference, the procedure is time consuming, expensive, and requires a significant amount of artistic ability, and therefor is not readily adaptable to mass production techniques. The U.S. Pat. No. 4,889,572 issued to Danico et al discloses a mass production technique for making tile designs from precut pieces of tile by first making a master design pattern, then placing a transparent substrate such as plastic over the master pattern, and then permanently cementing the backs of like matching pieces of tile to the transparent substrate in a manner to match the master design pattern. Alternately, the U.S. Pat. No. 4,889,572 teaches a mass production technique of making tile designs by using precut pieces of tile that are individually placed in a mold to recreate a previously created master pattern. Thereafter, the front faces of the tile pieces are secured by a water soluble glue, or a detachable adhesive, to a temporary carrier. Later when the back side of the tile pieces are permanently mounted to a surface, the material attached to the front faces of the tile pieces is removed by water or otherwise. Both of the methods of the U.S. Pat. No. 4,889,572, are methods of producing mosaic designs that are, in part, applicable to the mass production of mosaic designs for the present invention.
With the tile designs that are secured to flexible substrates, either by the temporary carrier on the front faces as taught by the U.S. Pat. No. 4,889,572 or by a screening carrier secured to back sides as conventionally done, there is a need to be adequately secured so they can withstand a significant amount of rough handling that can be expected by workmen when transporting and mounting the tile design in place. Should a tile piece break loose from its carrier during such handling, the unit may become defective or useless. Hence it is important that such tile pieces, back or front faces, are adequately secured to the carrier to withstand rough handling.
In a case where the front faces of the tile pieces are temporarily secured to a carrier, the strength of the temporary adhesive bond is usually directly related to the subsequent difficulty of removing the carrier after the tile pieces are subsequently permanently mounted. As mentioned above, the pieces of tile must be adequately secured to the carrier to withstand significant amounts of the expected rough handling. On the other hand, as the strength of the adhesive is increased, the difficulty of subsequently removing the carrier is also increased. In addition, once the carrier is removed, any adhesive residue left on the front faces is required to be removed without damage to the tile front faces. Further, when shipping or transporting such prior art tile designs, it is preferred to package such units in a manner to control the amount of flex and stress that may be applied to the designs to thereby reduce the possibility of pieces breaking loose. It would therefore by desirable to have a packaging arrangement by which the front faces mosaic designs, tile units, and the like, can be secured to a temporary carrier that could withstand a significant amount of rough handling, and yet still be easily separated from the tile units without leaving any noticeable amount of residue.
In mounting the mosaic designs or tile units of the prior art, whether the back faces are secured to the screening carrier in the conventional manner, or the front faces are secured to a temporary carrier, it is usually desired that such mosaic designs or tile units be mounted to fit within some overall desired positional relationship. Usually vertical and horizontal lines are provided on the mounting surface to serve as guides to aid in positioning items in place. The person mounting such units usually visually gages the items into place relative to these guide lines. When tile units are used to form entire walls or floors, the vertical and horizontal relationship must be maintained throughout, usually requiring a skilled workman to achieve the desired overall effect. It would therefor be desirable if a packaging arrangement could be provided for mosaic designs, tile units, and the like, that would include guides to aid the person installing the units to achieve the desired positional relationship, thereby reducing the skill required in such mounting process.
In addition to the two dimensional mosaic designs mentioned above, mosaic designs can be created in multiple layers to provide three dimensional designs. If the tile pieces used to create layers of the three dimensional design are colored or transparent or combination pieces, such mosaic designs, when lighted from behind, allow the colors of the overlapping pieces to blend and provide a blending of colors. Such three dimensional mosaic designs are particularly difficult to produce by individual manual procedures and are very time consuming and expensive. It would be desirable if a mass production technique could be provided to produce such three dimensional mosaic designs.